1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a biosensor, and more particularly, to a norovirus detection sensor and an electrochemical sensing method using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A biosensor is a biological analysis device for sensing a state and concentration of a target material based on characteristics of organisms, such as cells or tissues of animals and plants, enzymes, microorganisms, and the like. A biosensor typically includes a bioreceptor that senses and receives a target material, and a transducer that converts the sensed target material into a physically measurable signal. Such a biosensor is widely used in medicine for the purpose of analyzing bio-samples, such as blood, tissue cells, and the like. Recently, with growing interest in consumer health and wellbeing, use of biosensors is gradually broadened to foods analysis, environmental science, and so on.
On the other hand, noroviruses are food and water-mediated pathogenic microorganisms. When noroviruses are transmitted by food or water, the viruses cause infectious gastroenteritis in humans and thus are known as one of enteric viruses. Specifically, noroviruses are RNA viruses belonging to family Caliciviridae and genetically classified into five genogroups (GI-GV). Thereamong, it is known that human norovirus infection is mostly caused by eight genotypes of genogroup GI and 17 genotypes of genogroup GII. Exposure to only 100 particles of norovirus can cause symptoms such as diarrhea, stomach pain, vomiting, and the like. Vomit or feces excreted by such symptoms contain about one hundred million norovirus particles, which have strong infectivity and rapid transmission speed. In this regard, there is strong demand for technologies for detection and prevention of norovirus existing in food or water. In order to detect such noroviruses, sensor devices for sensing real-time polymerase chain reaction using nucleic acid-based techniques have been mostly employed. The real-time polymerase chain reaction uses norovirus RNA as a template and amplifies genetic information using polymerase, thereby selectively and specifically detecting norovirus based on the amplified genetic information.
However, such typical technologies using nucleic acids have drawbacks in that the technologies require various and complicated sample pre-treatment techniques, which consume much time and are expensive. Further, it is difficult to make a compact sensor device due to use of expensive specialized equipment. In addition, there is a restriction in detection of norovirus present at low concentration in contaminated foods.